Extreme body modification: Amputees risk DEATH by cutting off OWN limbs

Forget extreme plastic surgery, tattoos and piercings - a minority are taking body modification to the next level - by voluntarily cutting off their own limbs.

A body modifier has exclusively revealed how his "extra" limbs feel alien, and has resorted to the drastic measure of self-mutilation - because he actually want to be disabled.

Dr. Michael First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, has led investigations into this bizarre and extremely rare psychiatric condition which he is calling body integrity identity disorder (BIID).

Also known as amputee identity disorder, it gives people a fierce desire to rid themselves of perfectly healthy limbs.

“I had been experimenting with crippling my toes for a few years - breaking, freezing, and smashing them”, he said.

“I broke my big toe last May after binding it a lot with a bandage then hitting it with a hammer.

“I never let it heal, and by July I had to go to the hospital because the pain was unbearable.”

However, not to be dissuaded, Howard set to work on his second toe.

“I froze it twice with keyboard cleaner and crushed it with a vice before additionally dislocating it - the pain it is part of the process.

“And now I am working on my third toe - it is bent at an angle towards where the others used to be.”

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“I had been experimenting with crippling my toes for a few years - breaking, freezing, and smashing them”

BIID sufferer Howard Bull

And he admits to having a grisly goal: “What I really want is to lose my left leg high above my knee.”

Asked about the condition’s cause, he replies: “I believe I’ve always had BIID, but I do remember a trigger - I was around 10 when I saw an old Vincent Price movie, which showed a guy who lost all his limbs one by one and I thought ‘how fascinating.’”

Dr. First is among a small group of psychologists and psychiatrists who are trying to define the disorder, understand its origins and decide whether to include it in the encyclopaedic bible of psychiatry as a fully-fledged disease.

The idea of having extreme elective surgery, even when it involves mutilation or removal of healthy tissue, has met at least some acceptance in cases like sex reassignment, or cosmetic surgery for those who hate their noses or breasts even when those body parts are objectively fine.

But an obsessive desire for a limb amputation - one that drives people to cut off healthy arms and legs - tests the tolerance of even the most open-minded.

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The disorder has led some to injure themselves with guns or chain saws in desperate efforts to force surgical amputations.

And some have even been known to lay across train tracks to achieve their ambitions.

The future looks bleak for suffers, explains Dr. First: “It remains extremely rare for people with BIID to seek help from any health practitioner because of the awareness that the medical profession has little help to offer.

"These people don't feel that it's a limb that needs to be removed because it's ugly or defective in any way, they just feel like it's extra," said Dr First, who has studied the rare disorder for more than 15 years.

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OBSESSION: The disorder has led some to injure themselves with guns or chain saws

"It's just a sense of discomfort and they just feel like it's not right having it there", he said.

But the stigma attached to the condition - which has been likened to body dysmorphia and even transgenderism - has led to dozens suffering in silence for years.

Dr First said: "The people I've interviewed with this condition suffer tremendously.

"They spend so much time thinking about it, they are preoccupied, their life is unsettled, and after they get the surgery, they appear to be perfectly normal again."